Government policies

This webpage is intended to be a starting point for finding resources relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples history, culture and knowledge, with a focus on government policies.

Get started by using the following key phrases in the FindIt@Flinders search box:

“Aboriginal Australians government policy”

“Federal government intervention"

“Aboriginal Australians government relations”

'And there'll be NO dancing' : perspectives on policies impacting indigenous Australia since 2007 by Elisabeth Baehr and Barbara Schmidt-Haberkamp
Location Number: Online
ISBN: 1443891541
Publication Date: 2017

Belonging Together by Patrick Sullivan
Location Number: Online
Publication Date: 2011
Describes current Indigenous affairs policy in Australia, concentrating on the period following the end of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission in 2004.

A Different Inequality by Diane Austin-Broos
Location Number: Online
Publication Date: 2011
An exploration of why both the right and left of politics have so failed remote Aboriginal Australians, and why until policymakers and researchers take into account both cultural difference and inequality, we will not come anywhere near closing the gap.

Sovereign Subjects by Aileen Moreton-Robinson (Editor)
Location Number: Online
ISBN: 9781741147247
Publication Date: 2008
Some of Indigenous Australia's emerging and well-known thinkers offer a critical perspective on the most important political and cultural issues facing Indigenous people today and set the agenda for further action.

Coercive reconciliation : stabilise, normalise, exit aboriginal Australia by John C. Altman and Melinda Hinkson
Location Number: 305.89915 C672
Publication Date: 2007
In the wake of the release of Anderson/Wild Little Children Are Sacred report, the Howard government declared a national emergency and mobilised a coalition of police, army and others in what they suggest will be the ‘first phase’ of a program to tackle child sexual abuse in remote Aboriginal Australia. This book is a critical response to the government’s actions.

Indigenous Australians and the Law by Martin Hinton, Elliott Johnston and Daryle Rigney (editors)
Location Number: Online
Publication Date: 2008
Bringing together a well-respected team of commentators, many of them indigenous Australians themselves, this revised and updated edition examines the legal, social and political developments that have taken place in Australia since the publication of the last edition.

Indigenous Australians, Social Justice and Legal Reform by Hossein Esmaeili, Simone Tur & Gus Worby (editors)
Location Number: KM208.431 I39.E
Publication Date: 2016
Twenty-five years after Elliott Johnston’s thorough and prescient Report on the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, juvenile justice, freedom of speech, racial discrimination, human rights and a referendum on constitutional ‘recognition’ of Indigenous Australians remain subjects of contestation, national debate and international scrutiny. In this collection, 17 distinguished Indigenous and non-Indigenous jurists, scholars and community leaders show common cause with Johnston. They pursue better ways of understanding social values, justice and equality expressed through issues of native title, incarceration rates, cultural protection, self-determination and rights of Indigenous peoples.